


A Key to His Heart

by graytheglowinggay



Series: X-Men: My Self-Indulgent Gay Nonsense [13]
Category: Alpha Flight, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Falling In Love, Friendship/Love, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Introspection, Laughter, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, No Dialogue, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pre-Slash, Relationship(s), Sibling Bonding, Sibling Love, Skrull(s), Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:00:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25160530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graytheglowinggay/pseuds/graytheglowinggay
Summary: Jean-Paul Beaubier doesn't trust or open up easily. So, it's a big deal for someone to make him laugh. It's an even bigger deal for it to happen more than once.Or, the most significant people in Jean-Paul's life are the ones who can make him smile.
Relationships: Jean-Paul Beaubier & Bobby Drake, Jean-Paul Beaubier & Jeanne-Marie Beaubier, Jean-Paul Beaubier & Original Female Character(s), Jean-Paul Beaubier & Rogue, Jean-Paul Beaubier/Bobby Drake, Jean-Paul Beaubier/Kyle Jinadu
Series: X-Men: My Self-Indulgent Gay Nonsense [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693336
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	A Key to His Heart

Jean-Paul could count the number of people who could make him smile or laugh regularly on a single hand. Sure, some people might crack wise, and through some miracle, they’d manage to get a chuckle out of him. However, it would only be a one-time situation, so he didn’t count it. To see Jean-Paul smile, to see him truly happy, took a special sort of person, and there weren’t that many of them in the world.

The first person he genuinely found funny was his sister Aurora. Even though he hadn’t grown up knowing her, something had clicked when they met. There was a knowledge that they could be each other’s best friend or their worst enemy depending on how things went in their lives. Often, it was both at once. But one time, she just said something and it made him smile. It wasn’t like his Anglophone teammates, who tried far too hard to make him feel welcome and happy. Her humor was subtle and didn't show itself unless it was needed. She was like him in many ways. Except, of course, Aurora wasn’t hiding a part of herself. She had her issues, of course, Jean-Paul had witnessed her sister’s struggles with her mental health, and how deeply the traumas of her childhood had affected her. But through all that, she had Alpha Flight at her back. Through all of it, she had a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on. Jean-Paul got none of that. So he was bitter. He lashed out in stupid, meaningless ways, just to get some sort of attention, even if it was negative. Aurora wouldn’t take his bullshit, though. She only would listen to him when he acted properly, and he appreciated her for that. Their relationship was rocky, but he could count on it being there. And on all but his very worst of days, Aurora could smile, and he would smile, too.

Though his sexuality was an open secret among the members of Alpha Flight— there was only so much he could do to hide the athletes and male models that he spent most of his leisure hours with— outside of the team, it was a different story. The rest of the world still knew him as Jean-Paul Beaubier, Olympic skier, and that was an image that still wasn’t compatible with being gay. So, any superheroes outside of the team that he collaborated with became aware of his sexuality on a need-to-know basis. Logan, the Wolverine, knew, and Professor Xavier knew, and Rogue knew. During Alpha Flight’s collaboration with the X-Men, Anna Marie had used her mutant powers of absorption on him and gained all his memories. Every stolen glance, every forbidden kiss, every clandestine relationship he had embarked upon was her knowledge. Despite her Southern heritage, even though she held every advantage over him, she didn’t judge him. She didn’t treat him any differently than she would if he was straight. There was a quiet moment that they had together, after that revelation, where she said something. He couldn’t even remember what she said, but he burst out laughing, full-on belly laughter. Normally, he wouldn’t dare do such a thing, to show that kind of vulnerability. But Rogue knew everything about him, so what was the use of hiding?

Jean-Paul hated to admit that he had crushes. He was a millionaire, a star athlete, a playboy, a superhero. Those kinds of people didn’t get crushes. Yet, there he was, like a hormonal schoolboy with his heart all aflutter in his chest. Jean-Paul thought that Bobby Drake was entirely unfit to be a superhero in every way. He was impulsive, flighty, and prone to utilizing humor in the most inappropriate situations. There could be a hostage situation that involved terrorists and Bobby would still find to crack a joke. And sometimes, contrary to every shred of good judgment in Jean-Paul’s body, he would find himself laughing. Perhaps it was a defense or coping mechanism, a way to handle a crush that he was almost certain would never become requited; Bobby was definitely, 100%, without a doubt, heterosexual, and any imagining otherwise was just Jean-Paul indulging himself. Sometimes, he’d laugh at jokes that no one else did, that he didn’t even find funny, in the hopes that it would endear himself to the ice-powered mutant. Usually, it didn’t. Bad fashion choices, disastrous relationships— every little thing that Bobby did that screamed “straight man”— none of them discouraged him. They might’ve goaded him on. Maybe he could be the one to help him find who he truly was. They’d be with each other, and all that faux-hetero bravado would melt away, and there would only be the true Bobby, the man he’d had a crush on all those years.

Of course, his crush on Bobby Drake never worked out, but Jean-Paul found love elsewhere. He hadn’t expected to be impressed by the brand manager that his sister had hired to be in charge of Team Northstar Extreme Snowsports, but Kyle Jinadu had quickly proved himself to be an intelligent and capable man, who could see mistakes before they were made and often had better ideas than Jean-Paul had. He felt a little bit jealous and miffed at being shown up by someone of lower standing in the company than he was, but it was why Kyle had been hired: to know more than he did. The two of them didn’t interact outside of work until they ran into each other at a company Christmas party that neither of them particularly wanted to be at. They talked, mostly because neither of them had anything better to do, and to Jean-Paul’s surprise, he enjoyed the conversation. Kyle was genuinely clever and witty, with an acid tongue that he used sparingly but to great effect. It would be an exaggeration to say that Jean-Paul fell head-over-heels in love in that evening, but he certainly felt a spark, and the two of them left the party together. Things were awkward between the two of them after that night, as neither man wanted to be the first to admit that feelings had emerged from their date of serendipity. Somehow, Jean-Paul got over his emotional constipation and asked Kyle out on a proper dinner date. Jean-Paul barely touched his food for a good part of the evening, he had such fun talking to Kyle. He was close to just resting his head in his hands and staring at the other man like a lovesick schoolgirl. After they got past the rocky beginning, their relationship flourished, and the day that they got married was the happiest of Jean-Paul’s life.

Jean-Paul had never planned to have children, and neither did Kyle. So when a Skrull child showed up on their doorstep, asking for asylum, the two men had no idea what to do. Jean-Paul, fresh off playing his part in countering the Skrull invasion of Earth not that long prior, was skeptical of the Skrull’s intentions, but Kyle managed to convince him to trust her. First reaching out to Alpha Flight and then the Avengers, they managed to protect her from first her Skrull birth family, who had been raising her from birth to be a sleeper agent for the Skrull government, and eventually a whole Skrull military task force. When all was said and done, though, Mathias— or Mattie, as she preferred to be called— had become a member of their family. Though she wasn’t their blood, she took after him and Kyle in many ways, only some of which were helpful. She grew to have the same dry, sarcastic wit as her fathers, which made her particularly… charming as a teenager. She could be downright hurtful with her words, but most of the time she stuck to humorous verbal jabs that were only occasionally at the expense of others. However, in addition to her emerging adolescent attitude, puberty revealed a more unusual trait of hers. In addition to her Skrull powers of shape-shifting, she discovered that she could manifest light from her body, as well as the ability to manipulate already existing light to some extent. Knowing the dangers inherent to being a Skrull mutant, Kyle and Jean-Paul enrolled her in the Xavier School. There were some complications present in having his daughter as a student, though, and Jean-Paul had to do his best to hide his amusement whenever he heard stories of Mattie acting out in class.

Jean-Paul did not think of himself as a man who loved lightly. It took a great deal of work to earn his trust, but when someone had it, it was theirs for a lifetime. He didn’t express love much, either, but those who were loved by him knew how he did; a nod, a smile, a laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is both to establish the love I have for Jean-Paul's existing canon friendships & relationships, and to introduce the existence of Mathias "Mattie" Jinadu-Beaubier, an original child character I have for Jean-Paul and Kyle that I'm currently writing a whole fic about. I don't really think it's a big deal to know that she has a happy ending with them, because it's much more about the journey than the destination, as they say.
> 
> The whole situation with Northstar and Rogue is actually from a two-part comic called "X-Men/Alpha Flight: The Gift" (just called "X-Men/Alpha Flight on Marvel Unlimited) published in 1985, and everything I talked about with the two of them in that section pretty much happened in that comic. I'd suggest giving it a read if you're a fan of Northstar and the X-Men and don't mind more than a little 80s comics character.
> 
> Also, a note on Mattie's identity: Mattie was assigned male, but as Skrulls are shape-shifters, biological sex isn't really as big of a thing as it is for humans. Though Mathias is a masculine name, Mattie uses she/they pronouns primarily and identifies as female-aligned nonbinary.


End file.
